Today, many apartment owners are attempting to sell their apartments as condominiums (“condos”). In order to raise the market value of their apartments, these owners often try to modernize their apartments as much as possible. Many of these improvements focus on modernization of bathroom and washroom facilities, including replacing bathtubs with showers.
If the building is relatively old and has worn-down drainage pipes, this replacement process can often prove to be a lengthy and costly affair. In addition to removing the bathtub itself and inserting a shower head, building codes require that the bathtub drain be replaced with one adapted for shower use and that the shower drain be properly attached with a watertight seal. This necessitates more than simply removing the bathtub drain and replacing it with a shower drain: in order to ensure that the drain is sufficiently watertight, a plumber must dig into the concrete surrounding the drainage pipe below the bathtub drain in order to place a small piece of modern piping material and a secure fastener below the body of the shower drain.
FIG. 1 shows a floor containing a drainage pipe and bathtub-adapted drain. As the figure shows, the amount of space used by the bathtub drain is far less than the space used by the shower drain and the piece of piping and the secure fastener. In addition to the extra cost and time incurred by the addition of these many pieces, in some cases, the pre-existing floor area is insufficient to hold all of these pieces, requiring the plumber to dig into the ceiling of the apartment below in order to complete the installation. This entire process leads to a greatly increased price as well as requiring permission being given from neighbors.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of retrofitting drainage pipes attached to drains adapted for bathtub use with drains adapted for shower use which is less costly and more space efficient.